It would be nice if they could allow you one registration per IP. Certainly only one per email. Both can be skirted by the techsavvy, but not before the techsavvy send picks of their package over twitter.

You really haven't given us enough information, Ann, to make a decision. At Voloch, there is no apparent registration. You simply submit a username and email address and all the comments are moderated, but it can be totally bogus username.

What do you mean "register." Does that mean providing a verified email address that can be linked back to the commenter?

The worst part of the internet right now, for political blogs, is the attempts to track what people are saying and link those comments to real people, as a way to get enough information to do opposition research against the commenter.

It is occurring.

It is pernicious.

And it will eliminate real debate.

People want to be free to offer their opinions without having to worry that some Democrat Party hack is going to piece together who they are and start fucking auditing their tax returns.

Yes that can happen.

Yes, they will do it.

They did it to Joe the Plumber and they'll do it to us if you give them the power to do that, Ann.

For myself, if I can't comment anonymously, I'll stop commenting and begin a competing blog and that would probably halve your page views.

"You might end up with a better class of commenters. The scum might not want to register."

I'll also be able to ban commenters, which is something I've never been able to do. I will almost never do that. I the whole history of the blog, there are only maybe 3 people I would have banned if I could. The possibility of banning will give my warnings some clout.

One thing we will lose is the social media aspect of blogger, like when you click on a profile. But if you look over at Volokh, you'll see that you have 3 things to put in: Name; E-Mail (will not be published); Website. You could put your Blogger profile page in the "Website" space.

Go to Volokh, and click where you would click there if you wanted to comment. Above the comment box are 3 spaces for name, email, and website. After you do it the first time, it will remember you. I think registering will take about 5 seconds, and then if you're in the same computer, you won't have to do it again.

The whole blog that you see here will also be over there, going back 7 1/2 years. There are close to 30,000 posts, will all sorts of tags and comments, so it's taking a little longer than we'd thought to get it done right. I have great people working on it. I thought maybe it would happen today.

Ann Althouse Wrote:"Above the comment box are 3 spaces for name, email, and website. After you do it the first time, it will remember you. I think registering will take about 5 seconds, and then if you're in the same computer, you won't have to do it again."

This sort of a system isn't really "registration" as you could submit a completely bogus email address.

If that's the system, I'm all for it, because it preserves anonymity.

Do you intend, Ann, to moderate comments? If not, then this sort of registration system doesn't really accomplish anything except to put a cookie on the user's machine so they don't have to fill out the form each time.

To protect privacy, many people do not allow websites to place user-identifiable cookies on their computer in the first place, so this sort of a registration system would have no real effect or purpose.

So key questions:

1) Do you want to track commenters?2) Do you want to moderate their comments?

Not for nothing, but have you also thought about how you will fight spam (I believe Google was doing that service for you in the past, no?)

Why not just make it eazy on yr self Annchen??: post a note--"Only conservative WASP frat-boys in the TP-GOP allowed to post" (with a few exceptions for well-behaved Uncle Toms, and republo-ho's). Then you can limit your new "A-house Log cabin party list" to the insidahs, a priori as it were.

Google's attempts to tie commenter's accounts to their cell phones is what prompted me finally to delete my Blogger account.

Google is attempting to identify everyone on the internet and is using Blogger as one of the means to do it. They want to be able to trace every comment you ever wrote back to you individually in a way that positively identifies you.

And Google is a very Democrat Party-friendly company. I have no doubt their efforts would come to absolutely no good and represent a huge invasion of privacy.

So, I deleted my Blogger account and gmail accounts (and went OpenID through LiveJournal) specifically because Google is attempting to silence critics of the Democrat Party by identifying those critics.

Look what they did to Ann when she got too uppity. They flipped the off switch.

One of the nicest, best-formatted forums I've ever seen is the one for the MMO Eve-Online. Aside from the fact that it's got all the bells and whistles as far as easy buttons for HTML formatting (making it easy for everyone, not just those with code memorized), one of the coolest mechanics they have is the way it handles quotes.

When you want to quote someone directly, you highlight their text, in their comment, and hit quote. This automatically opens a reply field for you to make your comment. The end result is that their quote is presented in your comment with a box around it. This is especially good for multiple reply comments to a single paragraph of quoted text. In other words, if someone makes an entire paragraph of inane, completely hysterically wrong comments, you can use this structure (the boxes around their quotes) to easily respond point by point. To the 3rd party reader, this makes it very clear exactly what's going on.

Eve-Online, like many games, also allows tags (pictures and slogans, for instance that auto-attach with each comment made) for their threadwhores, but I'm not sure that's appropriate on a non-gaming blog. Although...they are funny as hell sometimes...

Will we still be able to identify our old friends..will they be able to use the same moniker? I don't post much here because I'm not nearly clever enough, but I like and know personalities of the commenters here and would like to be able to identify them on the other blog.

Frankly, I'm not crazy about lugging a Google ID all over the Net just because I don't want to shut down my browser a dozen times.

(yeah, I know...)

J said...

Why not just make it eazy on yr self Annchen??: post a note--"Only conservative WASP frat-boys in the TP-GOP allowed to post" (with a few exceptions for well-behaved Uncle Toms, and republo-ho's). Then you can limit your new "A-house Log cabin party list" to the insidahs, a priori as it were.

There is no registration at volokh. You can type anything you want into the name and e-mail field, and change it every time, and your comment still gets posted. The only reason I have an OpenID is this site. If the new site is like volokh, bye bye OpenID.

I don't want to panic anyone but what A. Althouse is not saying is that only a certain number of beings will have the requisite makeup and capacity to make this changeover. Nobody can tell who that will be. You should say goodbye to your friends now, just in case.

I have already registered at Wordpress, but I don't think t-man will work as a name, tman was taken, so I think it will be tman2011 (kind of dumb, but so what).

My initial reaction to the backroom idea was an involuntary flinch backward. What would be the point? In-jokes and allusions to backroom goings-on would develop and create a de facto two-class commenter system. It would also be fodder for conspiracy theories - see Journolist.

I voted Maybe; but now that you've described the process in more detail, I should have voted Yes. That's by no means an onerous registration process.

On other questions...

* I don't like the branching/threading idea. It's valuable on tech forums, but I think it hinders conversation in a more social blog like this.

* I disagree with the suggestion (and yes, I know it was a joke) of voting people off the island. But please, please, PLEASE give us an Ignore User feature! I would use it sparingly; but I would use it.

* I would consider subscribing to a back room. Depends on the nature of the extras.

I have cultivated a blog friendship with several commenters who are totally on the other side of the fence and who really tick off some of my conservative brothers and sisters.

People like hdhouse, Ritmo, garage and others have emailed me privately or spoke to me on the phone. Although we agree on absolutely nothing on most issuses I still value their opinions and their voice. I would hate to lose that.

You have to be willing to listen to the other side and give them a chance.

Sorry Orginal Mike. At one time I got all bent out of shape over the obssessive posting when Jeremy (Gene Olsen) was posting as Luckyoldson. The professor and I got in a big fight about it. She was right and I was wrong. Even Jeremy brings something worthwhile and should not be banned.

(Side note. That is the only time she was ever right and I was wrong. Just sayn')

You can register at volokh, and get your picture installed. Just like here. So if a faux TY shows up on a drive-by, the picture won't show, the regulars can make the troll, and the proprietess can ban 'em.

Mostly I just hate registering. I use a nom de plume here because I have to register. At Volokh, I use my actual name. Something I learned long ago. When nobody knows what to do, speak up. Right or wrong, at least they know who you are, and you got courage.

"I was toying with the idea of having a "back room," accessible by subscription, for the regulars to hang out, perhaps with some exclusive material."

Oh sure, a back room where folks can let loose, feel comfortable, and then just when they settle in, get burned when you sell althou.se to Yahoo! for big money and a chance to edit their news and commentary sections.

Some of us see through your ariannaesque aspirations and we won't get lured in by your promises of special back rooms for subscribing clients.

You have to be willing to listen to the other side and give them a chance.

6/8/11 1:41 PM"

This isn't the issue at all. The commenters identified offer no opinions, their only purpose is to disrupt everyone else. Garage may have made contributions years ago, but his contributions have long since ended.

These commenters create two problems: they increase the effort for anyone to wade through their mush to contribute, and they intimidate more moderate commenters from participating. Each of these costs far outweighs their sole benefit of showing people exactly how juvenile and full of hatred leftism is.

I don't object to the Professors position, it's her blog. But don't pretend these people have something to offer.

Marshal saidThis isn't the issue at all. The commenters identified offer no opinions, their only purpose is to disrupt everyone else. Garage may have made contributions years ago, but his contributions have long since ended."

That's not my call to make. Or yours. Or the professor's for that matter. If she is serious about the first amendment and her principles.

You have to stand up for the unpopluar, boring, repetitive douchnozzles even if they hate you.

PaddyO said: Oh sure, a back room where folks can let loose, feel comfortable, and then just when they settle in, get burned when you sell althou.se to Yahoo! for big money and a chance to edit their news and commentary sections.

Irony would be if Google outbid Yahoo and pulled comments back in their clutches! Althouse would laugh all the way to the bank.

That's not my call to make. Or yours. Or the professor's for that matter. If she is serious about the first amendment and her principles.

You have to stand up for the unpopluar, boring, repetitive douchnozzles even if they hate you.

Some on the Left (and maybe a few on the Right, but I haven't noticed) believe that my First Amendment right to speak includes a power to compel you to listen. It doesn't.

This is why, though I don't want to see anyone banned, I really want to see an Ignore User option. I'm a programmer, I know this adds a level of per-user data complexity, and it would be simpler to avoid that. But it IS my call to decide who's worth listening to, and who's wasting my time. Or it should be my call in the perfect blog.

I can only think of two recent commenters I would ignore; but if I could, I'd have them on the ignore list already. And sadly, they're two who frequently post very long nonsense screeds, so scrolling past them wastes more of my time and attention. I would prefer to have a tool that did that for me.

I do not understand the large number of resolute non-commenters responding to the poll. Why the reticence? Why so demure? Come on! I promise to be nice and to be open to your point of view, unless you turn out to be Irma le Douche or Tess d'Oucherville.

Once you've got the basic site up and running, can you have those "tech people" get to work on a mobile-friendly interface? Reading an Althouse thread can salvage a 2-hr airport layover, but hitting refresh and then scrolling alllllll thhhhhhe waaaaay baaaaack dooooown to the new comments is a real pain.

"Would you feel the same way if every day, you had a bunch of people standing in front of your business yelling and swearing?"

Funny that you say that because that happens every now and then. I go out and chase them away. If the professor feels that way she should wade in and tell them how she feels. I don't know that she feels the same way that you and Marshal feel about it. As you have said it is her joint.

You don't need to put anything at all in the 'website' portion. You just need a username and email address. If you put a website, your user name will be linked to that site - whatever it is - cnn.com, o.co, what have you.

Some WP sites will put you in as Anonymous if you don't put in a user name.

"Once you've got the basic site up and running, can you have those "tech people" get to work on a mobile-friendly interface? Reading an Althouse thread can salvage a 2-hr airport layover, but hitting refresh and then scrolling alllllll thhhhhhe waaaaay baaaaack dooooown to the new comments is a real pain."

The new site is going to be so optimized for mobile devices you're going to break down and cry with happiness! It's already done.

The new site is going to be so optimized for mobile devices you're going to break down and cry with happiness! It's already done.

This would only be true if the app will read all of the comments for using a smokey, sexy woman's voice while I'm driving. Truly optimized would allow me to comment by telling the app-chick what I want to say and have her correct logical fallacies before I post.

I just scroll past. Commenters get reps. Several times now I've sworn off this blog for long times because the milieu became corrosive, or low signal to noise ratio. You all with stronger dispositions had to beat down the manic-phase jokers before I would return.

Now I just get confused when all y'all got your t's in a twist, and it's over something a joker said up-thread, that I willfully never saw. Live and let live, there's always gonna be a neighbor who lets his house fall into ruin and doesn't care. Just pass on by, and think about that log in your own eye, and what you're gonna do about it.

Yes, and you'll be pleased to learn that I've volunteered as captain. You're welcome.

Peter Hoh at 11:29 said: "I want some function like in-trade."

This is a brilliant idea. But it sounds technically challenging.

AllenS at 2:46: I've joked before that your avatar looks like a mug shot. Is it? Because that would be pretty awesome.

For the record: I agree with TrooperYork on just about every point he's made. The exclusive back room -- it just doesn't seem very Althousian. If you want to charge a nominal fee for registration for everyone, I'd be fine with that. I've been making a lot of Amazon purchases through here, but I doubt that I've adequately repaid Althouse for the hours of entertainment I've had here.

Re. banning: This doesn't really trouble me, because the only time she'd ever do that is if someone gets really personal or disruptive to the conversation. This would almost never come into play.

Pastafarian, yeah, it kinda is a mug shot. It was the picture that the Somerset post office took for my passport.

I've been in Stillwater prison probably 10 times. Right after I bought this farm, I bought a Minnesota hay mower. At the time, I didn't realize it, but anything with a Minnesota brand name was made in the Stillwater prison. I had to buy parts for it often, because of the poor quality of workmanship. Who knew? I had to go through a distributor, pay him, then I'd go to the prison and pick up the parts. A Minnesota prison shopping bag was made out of burlap. They probably made those there too, for all I know. The inmates that I had to deal with were the ones who probably stayed in the half way house right on the prison grounds. The building was attached to the prison yard. I had to drive by the big iron gate to get to the parts pick up place. Once I got home I had to rethread, redrill, rethis, rethat, because everything they made was FUCKED UP!. I finally bought a John Deere No. 5 mower. I kept the frame from the Minnesota mower and mounted a fertilizer attachment on it.

What? You people thought that I did hard time? Not a chance. I've never been caught.

FWIW, when Belmont Club moved to PJM there was such an outcry against threaded comments that Wretchard got a custom setup that doesn't have them. (AFAICT they're ordinarily a part of the PJM comment interface.)

Late here, but I wish Ann had taken my suggestion and copied the Milblogger "Neptunus Lex" (a ret Navy Capt, Milblogger of the year this year) who uses Word-Press, and has branching threads which work out great. He has a dynamite-looking site as well. Branching threads, once one gets used to them, actually gives greater flexibility to multi-point/subj arguments, imho. And all Lex requires one to do is fill-in the user name and e-mail bloc--no registration required. Of course, we have a group of pretty much like-minded professionals over there, so things are fairly professional and polite--unlike this raffish group of mongrelized brigands, lol.. But, (sigh) it looks like Ann has already made up her mind..

Oh, and btw, Lex has a separate "room" called the "Flight Deck" in which selected regulars may expound in greater detail on various subj w. a comments section as well, but it is seldom utilized (although some VERY interesting posts are occasionally made there..)

What I've found interesting as I've surfed various blogs, left and right, is that commenting at conservative or centrist blogs is very easy. Commenting at leftist blogs almost always requires some kind of registration. To that end, I think that's why their comments always sound like a leftist echo chamber. I certainly disagree with what they're saying, but if I've got to trouble myself to register in order to tell them exactly what sort of fuckwits they are, I'm going to just move on.